


Fires of Doomsday

by Euregatto



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: AU - Chorus is lost, Blind Locus, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Eventual Relationships, Eventual Smut, Explicit Language, F/M, Felix Being a Dick, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Manipulation, Manipulative Relationship, Night Terrors, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Drama, Psychological Torture, Psychological Trauma, Stockholm Syndrome, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-12
Updated: 2017-07-26
Packaged: 2018-04-26 01:06:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4983958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euregatto/pseuds/Euregatto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Welcome to the end 'Nessa,” Felix says with a venomous grin. “I’m so glad you lived to witness it.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Interlude

**Author's Note:**

> I honestly think you should read this chapter with this song on loop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDx8gFJnYLc, cause I wrote to this track. Also I'm too lazy to insert a proper link so here's the whole goddamn URL.

 

 

_"K - b -!"_

_"Ki - et - up!"_

_"Fight! You have-!"_

Something's there, calling to her. A being that exists just outside the corona of the darkness.

 

 

_“Get up!”_

_"Kimball!"_

She jolts awake as the voice screams into her intercom, distinctly familiar yet hauntingly distant. An inanimate humming vibrates the underside of her torso, whispering something ancient and cruel, like the ravine of a canyon cleaved into permanent temperance by an earthquake long ago. It thrums within her skull, alienated, renews a sense of courage within her and she responds without delay, fingers grinding into the structure to find purchase. Breathes and pulls herself into reality.

Her body is like lead when she attempts to raise her head, to see where she is, to get a glimpse of the chaos. The first horror in her line of sight is Locus with the barrel of his rifle pressed to the depression of agent Washington’s helmet, kneeled halfway down the expanse of the bridge where the hovering platforms have crashed at some point during the battle. The panic sets in almost immediately, amplified by the ebbing of the thrumming and the converging austerity of the situation.

Wash is calling to her.

_“Get up and fight! You have to fight!”_

“Wash – oh God _no_ -!”

The gunshot echoes into the darkness that’s engulfing her vision again. She blinks at it wearily, feels the tender, burning ache where the plasma blade has sliced into her torso, just below the frill of her ribs as her body lolls with the motion of her weakened head. There’s a heavy, sickening thump of a body impacting the flat of the bridge. Jostles the vibrations with the imperative power of a crashing plane.

 _No_.

Get up. _Get up_.

She navigates to her knees when adrenaline amends her will. The pain festers like a disease, crippling her strength, accompanied by the dangerous heat of fluid sliding down the inside of her armor like spiders. Breathes and groans and keeps breathing.

 _Fight_.

Blood drips from her mouth into the inner arch of her visor. Breathes. Thinks she can feel a broken eye socket from one of Felix’s infamous hook punches. Breathes. Locates Felix at the keyhole of the tower, the buzzing sword sparking with lightning as they connect. _Breathes_.

Presses her hand to her intercom. “C-Carolina?”

_“Kimball, I read you! What’s happening?”_

“Wash is – I’m sorry, I couldn’t – I wasn’t strong enough.”

_“Kimball?!”_

She sinks in defeat, latticed to doom by her own miscalculated judgments. “We _failed_ , Lina. We failed…”

 _“Get to the ships!”_ Carolina cries into her radio, on the army’s channel, to every soldier willing to listen. _“Now! NOWNOWNOW! I don’t care how far you go, just get off this planet and don’t look back!”_

Felix drives the key into the slot, twists it. The pillar shudders with a crimson energy like viscera and the resounding beam rockets into the sky with pulsating hues of white; it emits an ear-splitting screech reminiscent of hordes of the shrieking damned. Vanessa Kimball screams against the pain but she’s drowned by the omnipotent wailing, by the savage maw of Hell resurrecting before her very eyes as the atmosphere disintegrates and the tectonic plates rupture below.

_No. No! **NO!**_

Her mind races – Doyle and Tucker and Carolina and Wash and counselling sessions and late night war plans and every miniscule detail is fabricated by deceit and manipulation and _Felix_ – and she recognizes Locus moving passed her to stand at his partner’s side. There’s something so terribly wrong with this. It was supposed to be _her_ , above _their_ corpses, the sword in _her_ hand. Just as she and Wash and everyone else had so thoroughly _planned_.

She glances back, sees Wash laying limp on the platform, the blood erupting from the puncture in his helmet and forming a crimson halo around his head. Ascending when the world descends into utter biblical desecration.

_“Kimball, run!”_

Touches her intercom, murmurs as the tears erupt and burn trails down her cheeks like liquid fire. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, Carolina. I failed you. I failed _everyone_.”

The planet almost feels like it’s tilting under her knees. The tower pitches immediately after and the beam screeches into orbit and arcs out in every direction, consuming horizons in mere seconds. Blistering the air and boiling the oceans and Kimball suddenly forgets how to _breathe_. Like when you’ve missed a step, and your mind crawls with panic and braces for the sudden impact of falling without wings.

They’ve won.

Charon’s _won_.

She stares absently at the pillar of fire and light and death, wonders if her army – if her friends – will make it before the earth broils into ash. If she could have saved them if Carolina had come in her stead. If only Wash would have –

Felix draws back with a startled shout when the hilt of the blade suddenly overheats and burns through layers of armor and undersuit material. The energy retracts, the sword drops, the weapon shatters like fragile glass against the platform. It scatters into fragments that reflect faces, Donald Doyle and Felix and every warrior who has ever held it before them, alien to human to something else entirely. “Ow! What the fuck was that?” he hisses, grasping at the wound by his wrist.

“It doesn’t matter now,” Locus mutters, gently clasping his partner’s shoulder. “We have to leave.”

Felix faces the general dropped pathetically to her knees. He tromps over to her with Locus paced evenly at his side, hesitates only several inches from her lithe form. From this angle he could put a bullet in her brain too, not that she appears to be capable of fighting back. He could let her carcass be consumed in the flames of the apocalypse and deliver her unto a fate less terrible than this.

 _Mm_ , but that wouldn’t be any fun.

“Hurts like a bitch, doesn’t it ‘Nessa?”

She sobs mutably, clutching at her laceration with desperate fingers but her posture is borderline defeated. Still barely grasping the last tendrils of her courage and her hope and her imminent demise. They’ve stripped her of everything – trust, sanity, cognizance. Left this animistic, gorged out shell. Tired and broken and fuck, Felix thinks he might get off on this later.

But for now, he’s not done.

Gives his silent partner a firm nod as Vanessa Kimball turns her head up to look at him.

He is _far_ from done and this isn’t over. Not _yet_. Not while he can make this victory _last_.

“Welcome to the end,” Felix says with a venomous grin, and Locus drives his fist into her visor with enough force to knock her unconscious.

 

 

 

 

_"I’m so glad you lived to witness it.”_

 

 

 

 

 

x


	2. The Beginning of the End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vanessa has hope still.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm considering making a playlist out of the songs I listen to when I write this story. I was mainly listening to this track: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMCXgqSgoB8) while I wrote this chapter. Speaking of, expect the chapter lengths to vary depending on the events and content.

   

(I heard a voice that said, "Welcome to the end.") 

* * *

 

 

   

   

“Vanessa?”

The darkness ebbs with even tides, the sensation of floating and falling alternating like the gravitational shifts of a planet. She flinches, nerves rocking with hard little pulses of fire, tries to recollect the tendrils of her sanity latticed across the edge of her memories as her grasp on reality strengthens with every breath. All at once her mind defogs. All at once she awakens.

“Oh, my apologies. Were you dreaming?”

Vanessa Kimball glances across the room to see Donald Doyle in the frame of her bedroom doorway, silhouetted by the glare of the corridor lights. He watches her with a piqued interest, his gaze illuminated by a calculated amber glow. She runs her stare over the contours of his alabaster armor and the imperfect gold trimming. Suddenly recalls the explosion in Armonia. The final fight. The Purge.

She sits up with a start to grasp at her side only to find that the laceration from the energy blade is nothing more than a figment of her dream.

_It was all just a dream?_

“I had an awful nightmare.”

Doyle murmurs under his breath, almost incoherently but she makes out a faint, “Oh, my.” He glimpses around, as if deciding whether he wants to approach, gives her a sympathetic stare. “Do you perhaps want to talk about it?”

“You died and Chorus fell…” She grasps the sheets, breathes. In the background she recognizes the familiar, bubbling laughter of Palomo and a subsequent shout from Tucker. The events of the dream click into place in the wake of reality and she’s grateful for Doyle’s presence when he perches on the side of her bed. He anchors her into the world, into Chorus, the here and the now.

“That does sound like a terrible dream.”

His hands are gentle on her shoulders, keeping her upright when exhaustion threatens to drag her back into unconsciousness. She finds his touch soothing, fingers kneading into the knots in her collarbone, working out the tension.

“Vanessa…”

“Yes?”

Doyle has both hands on her neck suddenly, fingers tightening with inhuman force and crushing down on her throat. The panic seizes her immediately but he’s already pushing her down with his weight, the contours of his armor digging painfully into her skin, her legs flailing to find purchase and her arms tangled in the grasping corpses of those she left to perish on Chorus.

_“Why did you let me die?”_

  

 

 

Vanessa Kimball awakens for the fourth time this week with a throbbing headache and a chill from her cold sweat. Her neck burns with phantom pain, her hands tremble when she tries to push up from the uncomfortably thin mattress. Her side aches. With an exasperated sigh she swings her legs over the edge of the bed, lets her feet touch the cold, brittle tile of the cell floor. A prison room designed like a ward, with gray walls and gray ceilings and a small window that only ever shows her an unfamiliar mountainous terrain.

Everything feels equally and just as painfully right and wrong and the dysphoria between the two offers stability in reality. She attempts to find comfort in the familiarity of the dream, of life before the Purge; wonders for a moment if Doyle’s eyes ever were brown and shit, she’s already _forgetting_. The dream is dodging her. And the darkness in its wake mocks her with the ghostly image of miniscule details she can’t remember.

Her side hurts. It hurts most days.

The pallid blue sunlight filters through the panel, soon to tarnish the room with gold similar to that of Doyle’s armor and she lets herself fall forward onto her hands, stretching out the balls of her feet. Her body planks easily but on some days pushups aren’t enough to rid her of the terrors of the present world. Of just how badly she’s fucked everything up and how everything was already fucked to hell after the destruction of Armonia.

Maybe she could have been the beacon of hope they needed if she had fought _her_ war, if Carolina had gone to the tower in her stead to end what wasn’t Kimball’s to begin with.

But it’s been months – five or six or sixteen, it’s so hard to tell – and she doesn’t hear a single word about the whereabouts of any potential survivors. Vanessa tells herself there has to be _someone_ left. There can’t be _nothing_. They can’t all be _dead_ in the remnants of ash and dust and fire.

For fuckssake, Jensen was only _seventeen_.

So she clings desperately to her fading hope and does thirty pushups. Fifty. One-hundred and keeps going until the burn consumes her rage and then keeps going.

  

 

 

She doesn’t realize she’s fallen back asleep (on the floor, no less) until Felix enters. He’s always the last person she ever wants to see and she doubts he’s thrilled about being here too, but he’s got a tray of simple food from the facility’s mess hall. Rice, carrot slices, a small slab of red meat. A lidded cup of water. The two guards in the frame of the door watch him carefully as he strolls across the room and slaps the tray down on the desk, shoots her an irritated glare. “Rise and shine ‘Nessa, it’s lunch time.”

She peels herself off the floor, notes the way he’s without armor like most days now, but he’s never seemed so cross before and she considers mocking him. Just to get under his skin. To torment him the way he’s manipulated her.

And she will rarely ever talk to him. But the dream haunts her, the nightmares torture her, the curiosity finally overwhelms her dire urge to break his neck.

“Why bother?” she starts, making her way over to the desk, straying away from him as a precautionary step. “What’s the point in keeping me alive?”

“Because Mr. Malcolm Hargrove, chief executive dick of the day, wants to keep your worthless ass alive for whatever fucking reason.” Felix is dripping with venom and sarcasm and judging by the rings under his eyes he hasn’t gotten mush sleep either. “Look, I’ve got a lot on my hands right now so either fuck off or eat something. I’m not leaving until you pick a choice, as much as I would honestly love to watch you get yourself off.”

“Fuck you.”

“I can settle for that as well.”

“Asshole.”

Vanessa knows she’s not going to win, even when his attempt at irritating her doesn’t quite reach his tone. He just seems distracted today so she lets it slide, for now, perches in the chair to pick at her plate. Felix mumbles about something related to Hargrove again, leans back against the wall and distractedly waits for her to finish. It’s like this most weeks, two meals a day with Felix or random guards to deliver and she almost wishes Locus would come instead.

At least _he_ doesn’t talk.

Felix snorts humorlessly, crosses his arms back against his chest. “Just eat the goddamn food, will you? I’m not standing here all day.”

“Boo-fucking-hoo, lil’ ol’ Felix is playing house maid.”

“I _will_ cut you again.”

“Empty threats,” she shoots back, “Hargrove wants me alive, remember?”

“Doesn’t mean I can’t cut you.”

“Do you _really_ want to get on his bad side again?”

It’s not the best of her comebacks but at least he presses his lips together and doesn’t respond. Goddamn, Vanessa Kimball really misses her home.

 _Be strong for them_ , she tells herself as she does almost every day, reluctantly shoving a forkful of rice into her mouth. She’s going to need her strength when they come for her.

Whoever _they_ might be.

  

 

 

Locus doesn’t feel comfortable out of his armor for reasons that all branch back into his utter inability to _see_ , but they’re grounded until Malcolm Hargrove figures out what to do with them next, so for now his suit is suspended in his locker, and for now he adapts to roaming the facility without the aid of his enhancement. It’s a bit overwhelming for the most part, to have to count the number of steps between one destination and another so he doesn’t have to ask for assistance from Felix – especially _Felix_ – but it occupies his otherwise ill-spent time.

He adapts to the layout of every floor with ease given the simplicity in a majority of the setup, and by the end of the third month since the transfer to the facility he doesn’t quite miss his armor so much.

It takes 3 strides to cross the hall to Felix’s room. 10 strides to get to either end of the corridor, several left turns are involved to make it outside and a handful of right turns detour his route to guide him to the cells. Occasionally he strolls for the sake of movement and he’ll find himself outside Vanessa Kimball’s cell, listening to her labored breathing as she occupies herself with pullups and pushups and situps, a lot of ups for someone at rock bottom.

Her determination fascinates him. He finds much less interest in some of the other prisoners, people who Locus doesn’t question because Hargrove doesn’t want them found. He suspects they’ll be executed soon, if not by him then by Felix or by another soldier simply following orders. Which bothers him only to the degree of piqued curiosity – Why keep Kimball alive?

To torment her, perhaps. To let her sit and rot and writhe in the agony of knowing that she couldn’t save Chorus. That she couldn’t save hundreds of people who looked to her for hope.

“That balding son of a mother fucking _bitch_.”

Locus thinks he would have liked to make it back to his room before running into Felix today, but his partner’s voice echoes down the hall with the reverence of a fire and he accepts his fate. “Unfortunate,” he mumbles to himself, facing the direction of the sound as bootsteps echo off the steel-plated floors. “You sound troubled.”

“Damn fucking _right_ I’m troubled. That dick still won’t pay us what he promised!” Felix’s voice draws to a pause at the rim of Locus’s shadow. “And I’m tired of playing care-taker.”

Locus hums with thought, feels the heated anger radiating from Felix like a sun. “We messed up our only mission with the consistency of amateurs. But he did say once we finish a few minor assignments for him, we will be given our share.”

“And I can’t believe one of them is acting as Vanessa Kimball’s _butler!_ That bitch doesn’t even say thank you. Jesus, after all the stupid shit I had to put up with between the undertrained news and those idiotic simulation soldiers-”

“We _both_ had to put up with the same amount of idiocy.”

Felix exhales an exasperated sigh, kicks the wall with his heel. “Yeah, well, you didn’t have a grenade lobbed at you. I think I deserve a bonus, just for that.”

"And now they're all dead. So there's not much use in getting constantly worked up over it." Locus reaches forward with both hands, finds the curve of Felix’s jaw. He runs his fingertips gently over the taught muscles pulled into a sour expression, the pads of his thumbs soothing over the depressions under Felix’s ochre eyes. “Mm. You haven’t been sleeping well.”

Felix pulls away, grumbles with disdain. “I’ve been running a lot of night missions so I could start building up our credit again. It’s softening the old bastard up a bit, maybe he’ll give us our pay early.”

“You never mentioned this before.”

“I wasn’t _supposed_ to tell you, okay? He’s not thrilled about how big of a fucking _disaster_ Chorus was and doesn’t trust us operating together in the field right now.” Felix mutters inaudibly and Locus recognizes the acute sound of him scratching his scalp in anxiety. “I’ve got it, alright? It’s just some secret ops missions; he’s looking into potential planets that might have other alien towers.”

Locus nods, veers onto a different topic. “You never told me what you saw in the simulation.”

“Because I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Are you really afraid of me?”

“Where’d you-?” Felix hesitates, shakes his head. “The fucking alien told you then. Dude, don’t listen to a computer program, especially one created by our sworn enemies.”

“We have many sworn enemies.”

“You say that like we might actually have friends.”

Locus gazes to the side a bit to follow the acute sound of Vanessa punching her cell door in the distance. “You’re not answering my question, Felix.”

“The _answer_ is _no_ , Locus, I’m not afraid of you. I think – I just _think_ I’m just afraid of losing you. You’re the only one who’s ever looked at me without thinking that I’m sort of psychopathic monster.” Felix presses the side of his fist to his partner’s chest. “Not that you ever look at me.”

“It’s a bit difficult for someone of my standing.”

“But you get my point. I’m not crazy. I’m not fucking _crazy_ , Locus.”

The taller mercenary gazes into the darkness and imagines the world through the vibrations of his armor enhancement, the outline of Felix and the colorless void that threads together to form a vague planet. He understands, suddenly, in a way sight has never offered him. “So _that’s_ what you saw.”

“Just drop it, will you?” Felix begins to pace down the hall, quick and light and he sucks the oxygen out of the room as he goes. “Fuck this, fuck aliens, and fuck Hargrove. I’m getting _drunk_.”

“At this time?”

“You don’t even know what time it is!”

“I’m _blind_ , Felix, I’m not inept. You only ever choose to make the worst decisions at the worst times.”

Locus flinches when a harsh laughter echoes down the corridor.

 

 

 


	3. Zenith

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vanessa gets an offer she can't refuse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter is already drafted and it's kinda long so I made this shorter.

   

   

“Locus?”

Locus fits the final piece of his armor into place just as Felix stalks into his room, the giddiest he’s ever been in the last few weeks. The silhouette of Felix’s familiar shape takes form with every pulse from the helmet’s gear, fractal grayscale light bending around the objects in his range. He hums as Felix approaches him, feels the familiar weight of his partner’s hand on his shoulder.

“What’s with the armor? You got the order too?”

“I did.”

Felix rolls his shoulders and Locus hears the barely audible crack in his sockets. “Hell yeah. Ready to fuck up someone’s head with me?”

Locus doesn’t respond, he merely glances towards the door, anticipating Felix’s exit. The mercenary in orange takes the lead, guides his partner down the corridors towards the housing cells across the base. Felix borrows the cell key by snatching the ring from the guard at the maw of the hall, prods through the set until he finds the right one.

He wedges the key into the lock, twists open the inner bolt. Locus hears the imperative clunk of metal snapping out of place, of a door sliding inwards, scraping tile.

Vanessa isn’t doing pushups today. Instead she’s seated by the old desk scratching tallies into the wall with her nails, leaving distinct streaks of blood as she works. Felix quirks an eyebrow, swings the keys around on his finger. “Every time I see you you’re up to something new.”

“Then stop visiting,” she shoots back, “I don’t want you here anyway.”

“Look, I’ve come to make an offer at the request of Malcolm Dickgrove himself. Now cut the bullshit and sit down so I can talk.”

Vanessa glares at him but complies wordlessly, makes her way over to her bed. She crosses her arms and her legs and settles into comfortably glaring at them. “I guess I’m listening,” she says bitterly, but the intrigue is there.

“We’ve been asked to make a proposition,” Locus replies tonelessly. “In this case, we’ve come to give you the _Chairman’s_ proposition. We lost too many men on Chorus, _good_ men, so now we want you to fill in their stead.”

“Join you?” she spits, jumping to her feet. She swiftly approaches the mercenary in orange, jabs him in the chest with her forefinger. “After what you did to my home? After what you did to the people of Chorus?!”

“Your home?” Felix retorts. “Well, why didn’t you say you were homesick? FILSS!”

The screen projects from a small camera in the corner of the room and spans along the far wall across from the door. As the digital logo ushers to life a feminine voice echoes into the enclosed space with the phonetic timbre of a mildly irritated hostess. _“How may I be of assistance, Felix?”_

“Miss Kimball here wants to see her home, she misses it so very much. Could you give us some of the latest live feed from Chorus?”

_“Certainly.”_

The video rolls almost immediately. Vanessa can feel a scream hesitating in her throat, caught between a heartbeat and a thought.

The planet is consumed in flames like it’s been reengineered into a sun, a tempest of fire and a cataclysm of starlight. Oceans boiled into magma, a ravenous maw of hell. It could have been something more with time and patience and promise and Vanessa thinks she can still feel it, feel Chorus in her veins, the laughter of teens at a park and entire ecosystems of plants arching for sunlight and continents of hope and humanity and –

She images Wash on the bridge, in a pool of his own blood. Her lieutenants, only children in her eyes, scared but eager and _burning_.

_Burning –_

_Why did you let me die?_

She curls her hands into fists, quickly diverts her gaze and closes her eyes. “Why are you showing me this?” she hisses, the tears like scalding acid behind her eyelids.

Felix moves to stand over her. “Because you _lost_.” He pushes down on her shoulders, pins her against the wall behind them and she finally meets his gaze, his face silhouetted by the fires raging in his wake. “There is _nothing_ left for you on Chorus, there is _nothing_ left for you _anywhere_. Your only chance at surviving is to either put a bullet through your brain, or start all over again.”

“With you.”

“With Charon,” Locus states. “I am not interested in what Hargrove has in store for you, he has only asked us to… _discuss_ , his offer. That is what we have done, the rest is up to you.”

“Besides Nessa,” Felix continues, his fingers digging painfully into her skin, “it’s not like you’re a good person. You were willing to kill knobby-knees Doyle for the sake of your own beliefs.”

“That doesn’t make me a bad person!” she snaps back.

“HA! The dude could barely hold a gun without fainting and you nearly pumped him full of lead!”

Vanessa grits her teeth. “Okay, fine! I’m not a good person, but at least I’m not a monster!”

Felix barks another harsh laugh. “Classic Kimball! Let me lay this out for you. Locus, if you would please.”

When Felix moves away Locus takes his spot with the speed of a shadow. His hand is suddenly around her throat, tight and almost possessive, anchoring her against the wall and nearly cracking her skull against the panel. She’s just barely able to breathe, to meet the bold X of the lotus-style helmet.

“See, _Love_ , the theory of right and wrong is applicable and subjective. What you called ‘right’ was merely the illusion of _choice_ , what you wanted wasn’t even open for discussion! You wanted to _kill_ everyone who wasn’t on your side. You wanted to ‘liberate’ Chorus from Doyle’s army all because they didn’t agree to see things the way you did, so that only _you_ would be left and only the people who believed in _your_ philosophy could take control of Chorus.”

Locus’s hand glides along her neck and up to the underside of her jaw. He turns her lips up so they just barely brush his helmet where is own mouth would be. She could fight back but not in this state, and maybe she’s tired of fighting them. Maybe she’s tired of fighting at all.

Felix grins behind his visor. “Do you know what that’s called, _Nessa_?”

She holds his gaze, fixates her scowl. “War.”

 _“Genocide_.”

Vanessa wants to vomit. That’s not right. That’s _not_ – “I’ll never join you,” she hisses, pushing against Locus’s chest, the contours of his armor catching on her fingers. He allows her to force him off, pleased that he’s gotten under her skin like so many times before. Felix is chuckling to himself in the background, bracketed by the light from the reflection of the video feed, of the hell that is now Chorus. “I’ll _never_ join you!”

“But you will,” Locus says, heading for the exit. He’s satisfied with this interrogation. “What other choice do you have?”

“It’s only upwards from here, Nessa,” Felix chirps next, swinging the keys around again. “You said it yourself – you’re not a good person.” He pulls the door open, lets Locus step through first. “You’ll be right at home.”

He follows his partner out into the hall. Slams the door shut behind him.

Vanessa collapses to the floor and screams until her voice has left her. She pleads for FILSS to shut off the feed but the computer system doesn’t respond, abandoning her the way Vanessa abandoned her people to die with her own weakness.

_I failed them._

She imagines for a moment that she’s sitting at a coffee table in the late night hours with Doyle, remembers this scene as a priority among most thoughts. She’s exhausted and blinking wearily at the steam billowing out of her mug and he says something genuinely funny that makes her smile. He tells her with a hushed meekness, “You’re awfully pretty beneath that scowl, Vanessa.”

_I lost._

And she remembers her army. Lieutenants Andersmith and Jensen fall asleep in the middle of assisting Kimball – Katie using her friend’s shoulder as a pillow – helping organize some stocks in the ammunitions room. Vanessa finds them heaped against the wall with crates of ammunition tipped in a half-moon around them and she suddenly hears Tucker, somewhere far off in the background, shouting at Caboose for something trivial related to the tank.

_There is nothing left._

So she sits and watches and relives the fate of Chorus all over again.

     

    

    

     

“You think she fell for that shit?” Felix asks when he and Locus enter Hargrove’s office.

Malcolm Hargrove is stroking the polished surface of the Meta’s chest piece in its display case, muttering something incoherent under his breath. Felix has walked in on this plenty of times before, some weird kind of mourning ritual that Hargrove does just to feel better about his son’s defection onto Project Freelancer. Felix wonders, for a moment, if Maine’s involvement with Director Leonard Church was really what got Charon industries so involved in the first place.

“What was her answer?”

Felix snaps back into the present, scoffs under his breath. “What do _you_ think? Kimball’s an adamant bitch, but she’ll come around.”

“Can you break her?” Hargrove asks, finally tearing away from the armor and moving over to his desk.

“Vanessa can’t be broken, not that easily. But she _is_ one-track minded, a real go-getter for the here and now. It’ll be a breeze to persuade her once she starts seeing things our way.”

“Her skill in the field will further our efforts with greater efficiency. We need her to see _everything_ from our own standpoint for the sake of our continued involvement.” Hargrove lifts a lit cigar from the ceramic ash tray, turns his back to them so he can face the viewing window overlooking the valley encasing the facility. “I am in the business of progression and absolute perfection. I suppose Director Church and I saw eye-to-eye on that much, in the end.”

Felix looks at Locus, returns his gaze to the ex-Chairman.

Hargrove smokes a short drag, exhales with a delicate breath. His expressions never differ much but the malicious grin is in his voice when he speaks again. “It simply cannot be helped…Make her suffer, if you must.”

Locus gives Felix a sided glance but says nothing.

“Don’t worry,” Felix tries again, this time more sternly. “She’ll come around. She’s nothing more than a puppet on a stage, sir.”

Hargrove brings the cigar to his lips.

“You may be right, Felix. We are all merely puppets on a stage, and that is why I prefer to pull the strings…”

    

   

      

     

Felix and Locus don’t talk as they leave the office because there’s nothing to be said about the topics they currently want to avoid. Instead they follow through with Hargrove’s assigned order to help fix a faulty tank in storage to kill a few hours. One of the soldiers drops the hatch too soon and nearly cleaves Locus’s hand in half (thank you armor), which rightfully earns him a knife wound to the torso.

Dinner is earlier than usual in the mess hall, and Felix decides to alleviate Locus’s irritation towards the day’s events by taking his leave. He fixes Kimball’s standard meal plate before heading down to the cells, bypassing the guards’ offers for assistance.

When he enters the room she’s sitting on her bed, staring absently at the far wall, which is still playing the feed of Chorus. He trots over to the desk, sets the tray carefully on the surface before facing the woman now gazing in his direction.

“Dinner time. Eat something.”

Vanessa rubs at her eyes. She’s been crying. Felix decides, suddenly, that she’s quite lovely in her despair and he shakes his head. What a stupid thought.

“Don’t make me tell you again. _Eat_.”

She doesn’t respond and returns to watching the video.

“Don’t think I won’t force this shit down your throat, Nessa.”

This time she sighs, faces him, her eyes set and determined and he wonders, for a moment, if they’ve finally broken her in the same sense of dropping thick glass; damaging it just enough to wear down its value, dislodging key pieces to make it almost useless. And as a result it is still whole but virtually incompatible with its former self.

“I know what you’re doing, Felix. There’s nothing left for me on Chorus, and there’s no hope for me here. So just…just _give_ _up_ for once, will you?”

He paces over to her and sits on the edge of her bed, hoping that he can play his cards right and make this _work_. She watches him, holds steady, unyielding beneath the tension between them.

He _has_ to make this work. Because Locus doesn’t know Kimball like _Felix_ does, Locus hasn’t had 2am conversations over the horrors of war, Locus didn’t witness Kimball cry after the death of their first general, Locus has never done anything for the news but _Felix_ has and _Felix_ knows Kimball better than she’ll ever know herself.

And he can use that.

“You fucked up,” he says, his voice meticulous but she doesn’t even blink. Tries again with a gentler tone. “You fucked up and everyone you knew and loved dearly _died_ , but Jesus, Kimball, that’s the reality of war and you know that. And that was _yesterday_ – Hell, that was five fucking _months_ ago.”

She doesn’t break eye contact with him. He has her attention, he has her faltering.

“Look, I stabbed you in the back and you don’t trust me and I get that, I do. But I was still with your army for almost three _years_ , I was with _you_ for three years; I still _know_ you. You’ve only ever believed in _tomorrow_ , with or without hope, with or without remorse.” Felix pauses, waits for his words to sink in. “You once told me that yesterday doesn’t affect tomorrow, only what we do in the present – what we do with _today_ – does. You have tomorrow ahead of you, Vanessa. It’s there and we both know you can do something with it.”

She moves her eyes to the floor, directs them back up to him. She’s listening.

“It’s not going to be the utopia you fought for, but it’s still going to be something. It can be something great, it can be something awful, but you won’t know until you let go of yesterday and do what’s best for _you_. You won’t know unless you _try_.”

Vanessa takes several prolonged moments to register his every word, to mull and struggle with the horrors of the past, to finally reach her bending point and _break_.

“I’ll do it.”

“Yeah,” Felix says with a grin, “I knew you would.”

  

   


	4. The Call to Arms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kimball gets a shot at proving herself, even if she wants to do anything but spend time with Felix and Locus.

**{4}**   
**[The Call to Arms]**

   

   

  

The trio spend the first two weeks accommodating to Vanessa’s new presence in the facility.

She gets her own room with a private half-bathroom, receives several pairs of undershirts, sports bras, and military trousers, new combat boots, miscellaneous feminine products and fresh sheets. On the third week of her move she takes a two-hour long shower, scrubs through an entire bar of soap and washes her hair with half a bottle of cheap conditioner, shaves her legs for the first time in years to sedate boredom and after cutting herself twice, decides to leave the rest alone.

Her side has scarred over and healed properly, according to Doctor Zander who’s been treating any potential infection with antibiotics and clean bandages. It no longer hurts, but she doesn’t exert herself during her workouts either.

Felix sits with her during the midday lunch hours in the mess hall almost every day. And he does today as well. Not with her explicit permission, and not because the tables are all occupied, but simply to piss her off. She’s made it imperatively clear that she dines alone. He’s made it equally transparent that he can do whatever the Hell he wants.

He’s different out of uniform, his dark hair gelled backed, his ears lined with small piercings and a visible snake tattoo rising up his neck from under the collar of his shirt. There’s several defined scars on his arms, shoulders, and even his cheek, but aside from the small bang that juts out stubbornly to emphasize his character, he appears placid in every way.

She has to remind herself not to let her guard down. He’s always come off as normal, in and out of uniform, for every year he resided under her army. And look what happened with that.

When Locus joins them later, his body is almost untouched, not a single tattoo or piercing, just the massive scars on his face that jettison across his heavily damaged eyes. It had never occurred to her that he’s blind. That the reason Felix gets two plates of food is to give one to Locus so he doesn’t have to stumble around in the clutter.

If anything occurred to her maybe she would have had the upper hand.

The tension is strung high between them but Felix actually has the courage to sit with the woman three nerve endings away from killing everyone on base – and for the life of him, Locus can’t figure out where Felix conjured up a ball sack that _big_.

When Felix talks about her new role as a mercenary Locus has to intervene with his own off-handed comments before Vanessa throws her fork at him. Either of them is up for grabs, really.

And now, there’s just silence.

“A merc,” Vanessa finally says, poking at her generous portion of rehydrated potato mash. “Do I really count as one without getting paid?”

Felix grins. There it is, that devilish lust in his ochre eyes. “Trust me,” he replies with a sinister hiss, “Hargrove always pays handsomely for all work completed, even if the world has to be burned to the ground.”

“So how much did you get for Chorus?”

She’s glaring at him now, anticipating his vicious response.

Locus responds instead. “That wasn’t mercenary work, Vanessa. That was war.”

   

   

  

* * *

 

   

   

  

Within another week Vanessa gains access to the public terminal down the hall and receives her own personal account that can be synched with any common HUD system. Unfortunately, there’s no one left to talk to. (And there’s no way in _Hell_ she’s stooping low enough to open a private chat box with Locus and Felix.)

Maybe she’ll befriend the guard who used to stand by her cell door.

    

 

   

* * *

 

   

   

  

Vanessa Kimball feels normal again, only for a few moments – a few days, really, until she dries the shower water off with her towel and slides on her undersuit, which doesn’t fit quite right because it’s as brand new as everything else.

She’s going into the field in a few days and it’s her first official start in this new life. Breaking in her crisp uniform isn’t making her adjustment all that much easier, though.

(And neither Felix nor Locus have stopped in to see her. Maybe it’s for the best.)

She realizes boredom is definitely her bigger issue and sends an email to the supply chain requesting access to e-books.

    

   

   

* * *

 

   

   

   

When a knock resounds from her door sometime shortly after a breakfast rollcall in the following week, she manually slides it open to find Felix and Locus suited up with a wheeled shipping crate between them.

“Delivery for the temperamental Vanessa Kimball,” Felix remarks and she flips him off with a painfully sarcastic smile. “Listen, you should be glad you’re getting this back so soon.”

“I’d like to know what the hell _this_ is.”

Locus tilts his head as his gear gives him a sweep of the layout before he pushes against the back of the box, shoving it through the door and into the center of the room.

Vanessa sighs and says with bitter apathy, “Yes, do come in. Mi casa es tu casa.”

Felix struts in after Locus, gives Vanessa an equally sarcastic bow of thanks to agitate her further. She slams the door shut, switches the manual to automatic and joins them around the crate. “You can do the honors,” Locus says, tapping the screen on the coded lock. It flickers to life at the register of his touch. “7-0-9-2.”

Vanessa taps the code on the displayed keypad. A sudden click resonates beneath the screen and the sealed top of the crate pops open. She pushes the cover along its belt until it slides off, folding up against the back of itself.

Her armor has been painted the same audacious shade of dark gray, bracketed by her favorite blue accents, the visor upgraded to silver, the U.N.S.C letters stamped on her chest plate in white. Vanessa grasps the edge of the crate until her knuckles bleed white.

“You made it gray,” she hisses.

Felix smirks. “Now you’ll fit right in.”

She checks it for listening devices and potentially fatal tampering in the helmet, finds nothing of interest, and motions for Felix to face the other direction. After he grumbles about Locus’s fortune he reluctantly turns to the wall.

She slides everything into place with relative ease. It’s been so long since she’s had her armor on she could have forgotten the miniscule details, like the locations of the clasps that snag on the texture of the undersuit, the sequence of neuron synching, and even the small buckle of the hip that works much like a belt against her outer layer. But instead she remembers all at once. And instead it all comes together like a finely tuned machine.

“There. You can look.”

Felix gyrates around again and scoffs. “Sinister, I like it. What do you think, Locus?”

He huffs. “It’s fine, probably.”

Vanessa adjusts quickly to the new weight of the armor on her body, the additional weight and the multitude of coding as the HUD restarts itself. She takes a moment to synch up all her information as the helmet’s programs settle into their routine layers.

“We’re wasting time,” Locus utters.

“Are we going somewhere?” Vanessa asks, glancing at them expectantly.

“The mission.”

“That’s tonight?”

“Schedules get changed quite often,” Felix informs her. “You pretty much have to be ready for anything. And given your prior experience and capability with the war of Chorus, I doubt I need to explain much more than that.”

_Yeah, because I was so capable when Chorus needed me most._

Locus heads out the door first with Felix close behind. Vanessa exhales, collecting her nerves, and follows the duo across the base towards the main landing bay for Charon ships. Carriers line the pads towards the outer bay and smaller planes trace the inner body. The room is alive with soldiers cycling in and out, mercs and recruits and prisoners.

Vanessa follows Felix onto the nearest dropship as Locus breaks off towards the cargo hold. Several soldiers in sinister dark gray much like them are already occupying half the bird, strapped into their seats with their weapons of choice in their laps.

“Welcome aboard your first mission,” Felix remarks, throwing his arm around her shoulders.

Vanessa brushes him off, scowls at him from behind her visor. “Don’t think I won’t shoot you.”

“So you know my kink.”

“Asshole.”

“Is that your kink?”

“Focus on the mission,” Locus interjects as he appears, padding up the bridge. “Strap in, we’re taking off.”

Vanessa makes it a point to sit across from them, buckling down and crossing her legs and arms in defiance. She pretends not to notice them. She definitely pretends not to notice Felix immaturely mimicking her from across the hull.

The dropship hovers and careens into the air several minutes later, jetting up into the sky. From this height she can see the terrain of the planet below them, the icy mountains and jagged overpasses, trees similar to pines blanketed in a thin jacket of frost, pallid in the waning sunlight. Then the stratosphere fades with the sky and the stars stretch out below them.

A message pops up in her private chat.

_FELIX: Just wait ‘til we give you a gun._

The first day of Vanessa Kimball’s new life has finally begun.

    

     

    

* * *

 

 

   

     

The outpost on Harper VII is built on a plateau overlooking a craggy terrain. Recently documented and reformed to now hold several colonies of roughly 1.4 million people, the planet has served as a rather reclusive hide out for the targets of Charon – or rather, the enemies of Malcolm Hargrove.

Vanessa is poised on an outlet above the maw of the ravine, hidden by the darkness of the planet’s new moons. Night here lasts almost twice as long as daytime, with three moons of approximately equal size to keep the planet aglow through the lapse of night. Except, of course, for the new moons. Now it is nearly pitch black, aside from the night vision in her HUD keeping her surroundings visible around her, and the chill of the wind is beginning to seep into her skin.

She keeps her pistol close. They’ve been awfully trusting to hand her a gun already, which could, ultimately, be their own downfall. But shooting them wouldn’t fix anything. They must have known that before she did. Hargrove must know that, at the very least.

Instead she sends a message to her new coworkers.

_KIMBALL: Is this what you always see?_

_LOCUS: Just about._

_FELIX: He doesn’t actually see, remember?_

“Shut up,” Locus hisses into the intercom. Vanessa recognizes the shadow of his hulking figure moving around the hull of the drop ship. He exits swiftly and treks up to her side, guiding her over to where Felix has rallied their four soldiers into a line.

“Listen up,” Felix addresses, swinging his assault rifle over his shoulder. “This fine thing here is Nessa Kimball. She’s the new merc in town. You _will_ address her with the same authority you show me and Locus or I will shoot off your balls with a long scoped rail gun. Do I make myself clear?”

“Sir!” the soldiers reply.

“Might just do it for shits and giggles,” Felix says under his breath so only his partners can hear him. Louder he adds, “You received your orders already, so I expect this mission to go off without a hitch. Spread the hell out and wait for our signal.”

The soldiers scatter swiftly down the hill surrounding the outpost. They keep out of the line of sight of the guards patrolling the perimeter, dark gray armor a nearly perfect camouflage in the dark of the night, as Locus takes point around the back of the building. Kimball keeps behind Felix with her forefinger firm against the trigger as they ghost Locus’s tracks.

“Hargrove wants to make sure you learn how we run our ops,” Felix tells her, all traces of his previous sarcasm now gone. Serious. Focused on the mission with the same firm reassurance as any properly trained soldier or mercenary. It reminds her of how dangerous he truly is. “So we’re gonna dive straight into it. I don’t have time for hand-holding and you’ve already got proper military training.”

“Felix,” Vanessa says with a coy smile in her voice, “if I didn’t know you better, I’d say you were complimenting me.”

“You’d be wrong. Dead wrong.”

“Focus,” Locus snaps from the front, his scope trained on the guard making their round towards the trio of mercs hiding just out of sight.

Vanessa doesn’t actually know _who_ they’re targeting. The mission debriefing that had been sent to her consisted of more blacked out lines than wording, informing her of an outpost, some unnamed people who’ve managed to piss Hargrove off beyond all rational belief, and the time frame for operation. The building is unmarked, the vehicles are unmarked, the guards wear unmarked uniforms – all of it is, at least to Vanessa’s understanding, a cover up.

Locus fires off a single round that hits the guard in the forehead. The suppressor does its job and does it well – the body that hits the ground makes more noise than the bullet, although the jostle still manages to alert the guard standing around the corner.

Vanessa realizes just then that Felix is no longer with them. He appears from the shadows just as the second guard happens upon the body and drives his knife through their neck, killing them almost instantly. Or at least, the blood loss will certainly give them sweet relief in a few seconds.

Locus pads forward and Kimball reluctantly follows. Felix swipes a keycard from the knifed guard, holding it up to the clearance pad by the door.

**ENTER ACCESS CODE: _ _ _ _ _ _**

“Fuck it,” Felix grumbles and drives his fist through the glass screen. The door slides open promptly. And with it, the alarms go off.

“Could’ve hacked it,” Vanessa suggests.

“No shit, but where’s the fun in that?”

Locus huffs and takes point. “We’re already on Hargrove’s bad side, Felix, we can’t afford to fuck this mission up.”

“You act like I don’t know that.”

They disappear into the corridor. Vanessa waits until their voices have faded before she looks wearily over her shoulder. An empty forest. She could run for it now, maybe find her way to society and hitch a ride on a mining vessel that hopefully travels as far as the outer rim. She could disappear. Hargrove had reach but he didn’t have much use for her, there’d be no reason for a pursuit, no want to waste funds searching for an expendable soldier with little knowledge of his corporation –

_LOCUS: Keep up_.

Yeah, right. She should have died on Chorus with everyone else.

_FELIX: Find the control room and get us some data. We’ll handle the soldiers._

Locus delivers her a file, a photograph taken from his helmet. It’s an image of a facility map on the wall, floor for floor, room for room. With all their flaws, Locus and Felix are certainly efficient, but Vanessa has never taken them to be anything but exactly, and lethally, that. Perhaps, if she had taken them a bit more seriously, or if she hadn’t been blinded by her own want to win an unending war, she would have had the upper hand. She would have still had Chorus.

With a sigh, Vanessa treks down the hall. Nothing better to do now but cooperate.

   

  

  

* * *

 

   

   

  

She follows the directions on the map carefully, rounding the stairs to the second of three floors, stepping carefully over the bloodied and mangled bodies of soldiers and guards. Unmarked. Random colors she doesn’t recognize, as if they were nothing less than a rag-tag group trying to assemble against a threat beyond their own comprehension. Felix and Locus either came through here or she didn’t give the other soldiers in her group enough credit.

In all fairness, Hargrove only hires the best.

The control room is finally in view and there’s someone typing furiously on the keyboard, deleting as many files as possible while simultaneously evacuating whoever he can as the mercenary group cleans through the building like a wildfire. He senses her just as she enters the room.

His weapon goes up as he turns and she returns his gesture at the same time. Their guns are even, visors gleaming, the tension settling thick and heavy and dangerous in the room. She can almost hear a pin drop, her own breath like a screech in the quiet.

The soldier before her is in an all-too-familiar tan and yellow set of armor, his assault rifle trembling as his aim falters in realization.

“K-Kimball?”

She would know that voice anywhere.

_But there’s no way…_

“Oh my God,” she says. “Matthews, you’re alive…”

 

  


	5. Rising, Rising

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Progress is a cost.

He’s hugging her and she doesn’t know what to think, what to say. When she used to be a commander her armies never touched her, never in celebration or in victory. When she used to be a commander she had never let Chorus die. But that’s just it – Chorus is _dead_. A sun among planets in a system forgotten by the unblinking government.

“Matthews?” she mutters again, throwing her arms around him as if he can’t be real, he can’t _possibly_ be real but he _is_. Chorus is dead but he certainly isn’t.

He pulls back, holding her still at arm’s length. As if he’ll let go and lose her all over again. “I’m so glad you’re okay, ma’am! We’ve been looking for you for months! We thought…we thought you were _dead_.”

“I did too,” she tells him. The tears, the relief, are burning but she won’t ever let anyone see that side of her. Not now. “How’d you survive?”

“I took a ship during the escape.” Matthews rushes back over to the computer and resumes his furious typing. “A bunch of us did!”

“So you’re not all dead? I…I thought…Who else is alive?”

Matthews freezes. His fingertips hover over the keypad, the final lines of coding eradicating the information in his databases. “How…?” He turns once more, but this time the distance between them is cautious. “How did you find me?”

 _“Isn’t it obvious?”_ Felix hisses as he and several of his soldiers emerge from the darkness of the corridor like silent, too silent snakes. He brings his hand up to Vanessa’s shoulder and _squeezes_.

Matthews is hardened. “You’re working with them.”

“No,” Vanessa utters, “no I-”

His gun snaps up. “Don’t. Move! Don’t you dare take another step!”

“Matthews, please wait-”

“I looked up to you!” He practically screams, the breaking hope in his voice rendering her own emotions completely irrelevant. “You were my…you were my _hero_! I _believed_ in you! We all believed in you and you’re working with the mercs who killed Chorus! Have you always been on their side? Is that it?”

“No!” She takes a half-stride forward but she knows it’s too late. “No, it’s not like that!”

“Get away from me! I _trusted_ you! I was ready to die for you!”

“And that can still be arranged,” Felix says.

There’s a ripple in the air behind Matthews. Panels of the backdrop slip away from the sinister green and gray armor and the glaring Locus-style helmet. There’s only one-half moment, the space between a dream and a pulse, where Vanessa’s breath hitches in her throat.

Locus slams his knife into Matthews’s spine and carves upwards to the base of the chest piece, severing bridges of nerves and tendons.

_“No!”_

“You’re with _us_ now, remember?” Felix hisses as Locus tosses the body to the floor. Matthews grunts, attempting to push himself up by his elbows, but Felix kicks him squarely in the ribs and sends him sprawling into the computer panels against the wall.

Vanessa drops to her knees at his side, right in the smears of blood from his wounds. “Matthews, oh God…” When her arms pull him up into her lap, he’s too weak to push her away.

Locus brushes against her shoulder and hands out the knife. “We don’t leave survivors, Kimball.”

She takes it.

Matthews has a punctured lung. His breaths sound like heaves, filtered, his hand against her upper arm grasping a little harder each time he inhales.

Vanessa rubs her thumb over Matthews’ yellow visor. Before all of this there was only love in her heart – wants, to bring her soldiers happiness, needs, to see them smile as their tomorrow finally came. A tomorrow they fought for. A tomorrow she vowed to protect. A tomorrow she destroyed.

“Ssh,” she tells him gently, her tears coming silently, “don’t fight it.”

“You have to fight,” he murmurs, the blood seeping dangerously out of his wounds. “You have to always, always _fight_ …”

“I’m so sorry.”

She presses the tip of the blade to his throat. It slides down easily, cutting through the material of his thermal undersuit, piercing his flesh with a sickening squelch. His throat gurgles with blood, his head rolls in her lap, his arms fall compliantly away.

Finally, finally – he stops moving.

“He probably would have survived if you hadn’t slowed him down,” Felix says to break the silence. He pats her on the back. “Good work Nessa.”

“Don’t fucking touch me,” Vanessa hisses venomously, slapping his arm away.

Locus grunts. “Even if your friends _are_ alive, Nessa, what are they going to think? This soldier, murdered by his own commander, the woman who used to fight for Chorus-”

“Shut up!”

If they want to parade in their victory or are exasperated by her stubbornness, they don’t say anything about it. Instead they motion for half their men to sweep the room and order the rest to clean out the remaining soldiers in the building.

Vanessa brings Matthew’s cooling corpse to her chest and holds him as she sobs. She knows they’re right. If anyone on Chorus did survive, it was no thanks to her.

Her future is with Charon.

It’s best this way.

 

    

* * *

 

    

   

“Nessa.”

The ride back to the ship is spent in silence until Felix and Locus finally approach her. She’s standing at the back of the carrier with her gaze fixated on the vast metal interior, pointedly eyeing every minute detail as a distraction. It should be clear that she isn’t interested in interaction or talking. But they would hardly care even if she had verbally asked.

“ _What_ , Felix?”

He looks at Locus and then back at her. “This is our line of work, and this is how things are done. You know that.”

Vanessa grips her pistol but doesn’t respond. Not yet. She’s still _seething_ , sick to her very stomach with every breath she takes that Matthews no longer can, missing Chorus and Doyle and Wash and Carolina and this is the life that she has agreed to because there is nothing left. Not for her.

Locus and Felix are defined by their paychecks, the people they kill, their merciless, serpentine, conniving tactics in the field of war. Vanessa is now defined as she pushes into the endless, forever endless battle from the other side. From _their_ side.

“We must follow our orders as soldiers,” Locus says.

“He’s right, Nessa,” Felix agrees. “This is war. Not everyone makes it back.”

She doesn’t face them. Doesn’t acknowledge them.

Felix rolls his shoulders. “Fine. Brood all you want. But when we get back to base, there’s something Locus and I are going to show you. And that’s an order, Kimball.”

Eventually they give up on irking any responses out of her and return to the other side of the carrier, Felix behind Locus, the other soldiers watching them curiously but quietly. There’s never been a place for opinion in a field of assassination and espionage and biting bullets.

There’s never been a place for Vanessa Kimball among any of it.

 

   

* * *

 

   

   

She stands at the door with her armor still marked by blood stains, Matthews’ blood stains, weaponless and her full attention on the vast interior of an otherwise empty room. Locus and Felix are behind her, silently waiting for the next moment and the moment after that and the breaths that come only every third.

At the pedestal in the center are two foot soldiers with rifles, and behind them is an artificial alien. He carries himself taller than Santa but Vanessa refuses to let her mind wander into memories of Caboose and Tucker.

_(Could they be alive too?)_

“It’s your totem,” she says, glancing at Felix over her shoulder.

“It was moved here before the Purge,” Locus tells her. “Hargrove believed we could still make use of it.”

“But I thought you can’t activate it without a key?”

Felix scoffs. “Easy. We just left him on.”

Vanessa presses her lips together and turns her attention to the alien. It watches them, as if expecting their approach. “So why did you bring me here?”

“Introduce yourself,” Locus replies.

She inhales, swiftly stepping up to the foot of the pedestal. Her boots clap against the floor. A tempo that echoes, echoes off the walls and into her ears, into her chest. The guards salute her only briefly, just enough to show respect for the newest mercenary before reassuming their unassuming positions.

She exhales. “Hello, I’m-”

_“I know who you are, Vanessa Kimball.”_

“Do you?”

_“I have witnessed your life through Isaac Gates.”_

She looks at the duo over her shoulder again, at Felix who grips his rifle a bit harder, at Locus who gives her a curt nod. There’s a flicker of unnerve between them and she wonders what they saw in the tower back on Chorus – a vision like a deity, dying at the precipice of war, or perhaps something so surreal it couldn’t have possibly been more than a terrible dream.

Vanessa returns her attention fully to the alien program. “I see. Then can I ask you something?”

 _“I can answer all you seek,”_ it responds in kind.

“Do you think I’m a good person?”

_“Good is but a relative term, Vanessa Kimball. I do, however, think that you are strong. You have always been brave enough to change your fate, courageous to no fault, refusing to lay down and die like so many leaders before you. You have hope in the face of a tomorrow that can be so unlike what you strive to create yet you are not discouraged, instead you adapt and in the end you survive.”_

She wouldn’t have survived Chorus without Felix and Locus. So much for that.

_“Perhaps you are good in the sense of the human term, but to my kind, you are the very epitome of a warrior. I know who you are, Vanessa Kimball.”_

He reaches out and lays a hand on her shoulder. There is no weight to its touch or comfort or any hint of remorse in its voice.

Then there is a vision.

   

Maybe she was thinking about something between them before her mind is completely blanked, hearing the inanimate darkness of the room like an ancient, unforgiving star with a clasp on the frigid, lapsing silence, and her thoughts are stimulated by two new heartbeats in synch, rolling drums in the ravine of quiet.

Locus and Felix are beside her, heartbeats in her mind that raise guns to her head. She’s considering their memories, stitched into the power of the sight like threadbare sheets, sweat and sunrises and coffee stains and nails and moans and the imprints of lazily discarded armaments from suits, frilled by the hate and the heat of battle and the ever-encompassing nightmares.

They pull their triggers and kill her again and again and again.

Now she’s defining her place in the middle of their conflict, quite suddenly in their bed, between Locus with an arm splayed behind her head and Felix with his cheek on her stomach, her hands stroking his hair hair. She is between the one who keeps his distance and the one who gets too close, like being pushed off a cliff with the endless sky above and the inevitable ground below.

Maybe she just _is_.

 _“What would it mean,”_ she begins, her voice like a shotgun in the dead of night, _“to be wrong about what you fight for, when others have died for that ideal? For you?”_

 _“That you’re a soldier,”_ Locus replies promptly.

 _“Or a monster,”_ Felix amends. _“Depends on if you led them intentionally to their demise or their salvation.”_

_“A soldier would find their salvation, even if the battle boils into a blood bath.”_

_“A monster delivers them death with every intention of getting them killed.”_

She hums. _“Sounds to me like you two are monsters then.”_

 _“Who knows,”_ Locus says, _“after all, we were just fighting for what we believe in.”_

   

All at once the vision ends. Vanessa is thrusted back into reality with the grace of a feather and the force of a punch, her breath hitched, her mind racing to reassemble itself. A monster, they had said, even if they had said it to her in a dream. She’s a monster and she’ll always be a monster. Battles. Wars. Genocide. Purging. Rinse. Repeat.

The AI looks almost disappointed as it releases her from its spell.

_“But it seems, Ms. Kimball, that you have forgotten yourself.”_

Then the alien recedes, expecting no further questions. Its eyes do not wander as Vanessa hastily returns to Locus and Felix and the trio show themselves out.

She’ll be back.

  

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the AU in which Felix and Locus win (at the last minute), and Chorus burns; starring Vanessa Kimball and the charred remains of her friends.
> 
> I honestly have no idea where I'm going with this but I've got a general direction and several bullet points of events I want to get to, so the tags are subject to change, and the rating will most likely bump up to explicit way later on. For now, enjoy the chaos.


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